Portland is Awesome

Let’s face it. When the weather is this nice, Monday isn’t a day to which we exactly look forward. Let alone a day that has us considering uttering anything other than expletives while we roll out of bed.

But all of that changes now. Because now you know about another awesome Portland blog: Yay! Monday!

Yay! Monday! is designed to provide you with exactly what you need to break through your Monday haze. And you’ll find it hard to keep your inspiration in check after reviewing the collection of nine inspiring sites, carefully selected by your curator Chris Kalani.

A weekly collection of Design, Art, and Photography that I like and want everyone to know about.

Even better? It changes every Monday. Get it?

So take a few minutes out of your hectic workday to head on over to Yay! Monday! another awesome Portland blog.

(Okay, so technically, Chris is from Vancouver, WA. But he works in Portland and he’s working on Refresh Portland. And besides, Yay! Monday! is way too awesome not to share. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

Music is memories. And these songs are my summer memories in Portland from 1992-1998.

Staring out the window at the passing, warm city as me and Sarah and Jess drove around playing my Dharma Bums tape. Hanging with Kaia of Team Dresch on her porch playing acoustic guitar in S.E. around the corner from my new girlfriend’s house. Interviewing Hazel on the radio and loving Fred’s dancing. Being a tad intimidated at the drunk punks stumbling around the Satyricon, but excited about the loud rocking Wipers show; the drum reverb like an old friend. Biking home in the warm summer quiet evening, weaving around the rose garden circles in Ladd’s Addition, humming to myself a Spinanes song, the day after Rebecca totally hit on me at a show at Berbati’s. Seeing Elliott sitting quietly writing something in a notepad in the back of every S.E. coffeeshop I seemed to walk into. And of course my friend Ben, who I was close with for a time…and life meandered and I went on to do things and he went on to be Kind of Like Spitting.

Today I thought about about my youth, my musical youth, my electric youth. I made a little mixtape for y’all of the bands that meant the most to me during that period of my life. Bands and musicians that I loved, bought their music, possibly knew personally. Music that watched me grow up.

Shout outs to those bands I didn’t include on the mix, but saw at shows around town.
In no particular order:
Hitting Birth, Calamity Jane, Kurtz Project
Nero’s Rome, Naked Lunch, Treefrogs
Drunk At Abi’s, Sweaty Nipples
Pond, Gravelpit, Thrillbilly
Henry Moon, Sylvia’s Ghost, On A Llama
Pete Mizer and the Five Fingers of Funk
Doris Daze, Jesus Presley, Skiploader
Richmond Fontaine, 17 Reasons Why
Carmina Piranha, Kerosene Dream
Everclear (Greg Eklund is a good guy)
McKinley (I actually did buy her CD; it was great.)

Pink Martini since I knew a guy who played bass for them, and they played at our crazy party when the tech company I worked for got bought out by Disney right before I moved away.

Kaitlyn Ni Donovan, still plays; I saw her a few months ago at a lovely wine bar evening show. And she has a special place in my heart for being the manager of the 1201, the bar which I basically lived at during my 20’s. Hi Phil!

And last but not least, Local’s Only, the little record shop that could (for a little while.)
I would go in there and get a new 7″ or zine or CD of some local band.

What are your 1990’s local musical memories? Where were they? Do you still listen to them?

Tell me this guy Dave doesn’t know Portland. He likes “beer, soccer, basketball, books, pinball, and festivals that serve beer, amongst many other things.”

Okay, so there’s no biking. But, I mean other than that? Dave knows Portland is an awesome Portland blog covering Portland’s favorite topics:

I used to make mental note of the dates and times of upcoming Timbers matches, eating contests, festivals, fairs, and events in and around town, and pester my friends with the information via email weekly as the events beckoned. If it had a beer garden, I was on it!

Luckily, Dave has stopped harassing his friends and has started harassing us by posting his insights to a blog.

If you want to know what’s happening in Portland, Dave knows Portland is an awesome place to start.

I have some creative friends who might agree most with the sad facts on remuneration for artists that is part of this story, but I think they’d also agree with the overall gist of this article. It’s not just the books, cafes, food in Portland that stimulate creative minds, but the general openness and tolerance. You can be whatever. Paris was a famous artists’ haven for the same reasons, except in its creative heyday it was also very affordable. And let’s not forget that what Paris also had in abundance was a world famous joie de vivre which it lost somewhat after WWII. Personally, I think about Paris-Portland comparisons all the time, especially when I hear of another creative luminary, like Todd Haynes, moving here to free themselves from the trap of well-scrutinized celebrity. And I detect signs we’re getting much better in the spirit for living. We’re more social. We just have to get to the point where more people love art more and make it possible for young artists to live, thrive and stay here.

One of the gazillion things I love about Portland is the access to affordable and eclectic opportunities to both watch and participate in the performing arts scene.  For the moment however, I am going to focus on music.

Being a small business owner with an early bedtime, I don’t get out much these days.  But sometimes great music will come and find you.  Several months ago I met Marie Schumacher at CubeSpace’s monthly nonprofit networking event.  Marie and I got together over coffee so that she could pick my brain about consulting and her organization PDX Vox.  As a thank you, she sent me a copy of her CD Sometimes at Night, which was some of the best new music I had heard in months (if not years).

Fast forward to now.  After many, many months, Marie sent me an email about an upcoming gig on June 1st at 1pm in the afternoon at Springbox Gallery, 2375 NW Thurman St., Portland. Yes, this is a show that is business-owner and parent friendly.  How cool is that!??!?!?!?  And with a suggested donation of $5-$10, it is cheap to boot.  That alone is cause for some serious celebration.

But wait, there’s more.  Portland also has a great new resource to find new music, with an emphasis on the homegrown stuff from the Pacific Northwest.  When OPB shifted their on-air music programming to an online music page, that opened up a whole new world for those of us who didn’t stay up late enough to listen to David Christensen’s music show Ecleticity.  Now we can access streaming music and well as download studio performances and check out playlists and all sorts of fun stuff.

I still don’t sit still long enough to listen to as much music as I would like, but I am enjoying these new opportunities nonetheless and invite you all to join me.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve managed to—often unintentionally—eavesdrop on some pretty interesting conversations here in good ol’ Portland. Spend enough time in coffee shops, on public transit, and at brewpubs and it’s simply bound to happen.

And sure, nothing beats a good “OH” tweet. But sometimes, you’re looking for a little more catharsis.

If only there were somewhere to vent your bile and snark on a larger stage. If only…

Enter Overheard in PDX

Part voyeur daydream, part sad commentary on life as we know it, Overheard in PDX is a never-ending stream of the strange things that come out of other people’s mouths, submitted by people who were lucky(?) enough to hear them.

A quintessential part of the Portland experience, I’ve heard it said that Overheard in PDX is an awesome Portland blog.

I’m a transplant from the LA area. There, I said it. But I moved here not because of a job, but rather I got a job so I could move here. One of the things about Portland that amazes me on a regular basis is just how small this town is and how connected we all are.

I’ve been working downtown for almost 8 years now and I bump into people I know all the time. A couple of weeks ago I went to lunch with a buddy of mine and we bumped into some old coworkers from a previous employer. We weren’t talking on the sidewalk for more than 5 minutes when another fellow walked up that knew everyone else but me! Next thing you know, everyone is catching up and reminiscing about old times.

I like to promote local business as much as I can, and at the very least, I try to always work with local representatives. As such, I often run into people that used to work for so-and-so and now work with so-and-so.

One particularly funny incident came up when we realized that a new vendor we were meeting was someone we actually had a bad experience with when they worked for a different vendor a few years earlier. Only we we all met face to face did it dawn on us! We thought “oh no, it’s that crazy vendor!” and he thought “oh no, it’s those crazy customers!” We worked everything out in the end, but it just goes to show that you just never know who you’re going to run into.

The thing is, this isn’t an occasional thing… it happens all the time to me.

And recently, Twitter has become the way folks in Portland are staying connected. For example, did you know that the Portland Police is on Twitter? Further, the officer that posts is one of the funniest and most informative folks I’ve read on twitter. I’ve never felt such a personal connection to the Police before. It sounds corny, but I’m glad that the Portland Police Bureau is savvy enough to use this new medium to stay connected with us.

Of course, there are many awesome Portland Blogs that help us stay in touch with each other.

The moral of working and living in Portland is clearly “Don’t burn your bridges!” Post a comment and let me know other ways Portland stays connected.

“If only…” your geeky mind struggles. “If only I could be as adept at parenting as I am at managing information via RSS feeds.”

Okay, well, maybe that’s just my mind. But still.

You’re a geek. You’re a parent. You’re looking for hacks. Enter Parent Hacks.

With parenting tips, books, techniques, cool stuff, and firsthand accounts of actual parental successes (gasp!), Parent Hacks is the ultimate way to get more out of parenting. And maybe, just maybe, the thing that will keep your kid free of a service pack or two.

Besides, how often do you get to read a blog where one of the categories is “Poop, pee, potty, etc.“?

On second thought, don’t answer that.

Get the tips you need to succeed in all your parent geeking. Visit Parent Hacks, an awesome Portland blog.

One of the multitude of things that makes Portland awesome is its creative vibe. And that creativity often comes through in a variety of ways—culinary pursuits, brewing, coding, music. But more and more the one thing for which we’re becoming known is our vibrant crafting scene.

So much crafty stuff is happening around here on any given day, that it’s difficult to stay on top of it all. (And I’m not even into crafting. I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone who is.)

But have no fear craftaholics. Help is near. And it’s a blog called DIY Alert!

I swear, this thing is chock full of more craftiness than you can shake a size 13 needle at. (So much craftiness, I’m using dangling prepositions!) From knitting to felting to profiles on artists to fabrics to yarns… the list goes on and on.

Knit one, pearl two, indeed!

So, if you’re into crafty type stuff or you know someone who is, I’d highly recommend DIY Alert!, an awesome Portland blog.

As a relatively short-time Portland resident (I mean, I’ve only lived here 13 years or so), I’ve always taken a particular interest in the history of our fair town. And for that, there was no better place than Stumptown Confidential.

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t link to “Stumptown Confidential.” And that’s because, unfortunately, that brilliant blog recently met with its untimely demise—due to a hosting problem.

Stumptown Confidential is history – my files were lost when the host flipped some switch. I’m saddened that all my work from 2004-2008 is gone for good. Thankfully I still have the photos and put them up on a Flickr account.

But the story doesn’t end there. The good news is that Stumptown Confidential has risen from the proverbial ashes as part of another of Schlockstar’s sites, Lost Oregon:

The goal of the site is the same as Stumptown Confidential’s – document the disappearing Portland and Oregon of the recent past – through postcards, photos and words. Due to my geographical location of Portland metro, the site might be more skewed toward the area though.

So, take a little trip down memory lane—an often kitschy memory lane, at that—with Lost Oregon, an awesome Portland blog.